This actually isn't super rare... Ghost towns used to get sold quite cheaply, as they'd be on worthless land in out of the way places. Don't think this is so much the case anymore.

Remember reading a short story about it once, where a guy tried to fleece a young man by selling him a worthless ghost town. Turns out the "naive" young man bought it and ground up all the buildings for the tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold dust in the mortar. Good stuff.